Originally Posted by
merlinextraligh
That's the difference between back in the day, and the EPO era.
Amphetamines help some for the reasons you stated. But it's not a huge effect, and it also can have downsides to performance. It was definitely possible to race without it.
EPO dramatically increases performance, making it much more difficult to compete against people using it, if you didn't.
There was some blood doping going on but not at my/our level. I think blood doping was banned about 1985 or 86...epo was banned, I think in 1990. Not every team can do this...it's expensive as hell and even if someone was motivated to try, you'd have been on your own and would need to be able to affford it and have someone that knew what they were doing. Espoir teams do not typically get involved in this, but individual riders literally take their lives in their own hands messing with this stuff.